GOP and Conservative leaders in Suffolk County welcomed George Demos to the 2012 NY-1 race by announcing their support for his opponent, Randy Altschuler.

“We need to learn from last year’s mistakes and not let divisions within our own partyallow Tim Bishop to sneak back into office again,” said County GOP Chairman John JayLaValle in a statement released by Altschuler’s campaign.

“Our country is in the midst of a severe economic and fiscal crisis, and we need abusiness leader like Randy Atlschuler in Washington to fix it.”

“The fact of the matter is that Demos can’t win this race and he knows it. The only thing his candidacy does is make it easier for a job-killing liberal like Bishop to get re-elected. He has zero support within the Conservative Party and if he cared at all about defeating Bishop he would get out of the race.”

Demos is a Republican, which means he doesn’t need permission in the form of a Wilson-Pakula to run for that party’s line, and could simply petition his way onto the ballot. That’s not the case with the Conservative Party, so it looks like he’ll have to run as a write-in.

That’s what Christopher Nixon Cox, son of state GOP Chairman Ed Cox, tried to do in 2010, filing opportunity-to-ballot petitions with the Board of Elections after the Conservative Party declined to allow a primary between himself and its preferred candidate, Altschuler.

Altschuler easily defeated Cox and Demos on primary day. He came close to upsetting Bishop, too, but eventually conceded the race in early December – the last undecided Congressional contest in the country at that point.

The final tally in the November general election was Altschuler, 97,723; Bishop, 98,316.

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